Wednesday, June 01, 2011

The In Crowd, or 50 Ways to Leave Scott Pelley

I'm in with the in crowd, I go where the in crowd goesI'm in with the in crowd and I know what the in crowd knows

One of the things we know is that Sarah Palin is dumb and irrelevant. We know this because we've been told this repeatedly. Which is why the news media are following her every move, as CBS News notes in a report that is simultaneously hilarious and pathetic:

Since Palin and her team won't share where the potential candidate is headed, reporters and producers have little choice but to simply stay close to Palin's bus.

This has resulted in scenes of the Palin bus tooling down the highway followed by a caravan of 10 or 15 vehicles all trying to make sure they don't lose sight of the Palin bus.

It adds up to a dangerous situation, says CBS News Producer Ryan Corsaro. "I just hope to God that one of these young producers with a camera whose bosses are making them follow Sarah Palin as a potential Republican candidate don't get in a car crash, because this is dangerous," he said.

Actually, what the media have lost sight of isn't Palin's bus. There's no reason they have to follow her around at all. Dana Milbank, one of the media bigfoots at the Washington Post, even declared February a "Palin-free month." If Dana Milbank can do it, why can't the rest of our scribes and betters figure it out?

Worse still, CBS News seems to have unearthed a conspiracy:

The confusing nature of the trip - which was planned by two advance aides recently hired by Palin - played out at a coffee shop this morning, where Palin stopped to shake hands with locals in what looked to reporters like the very definition of a campaign-style photo-opportunity. Multiple people showed up at the event saying they were there because they wanted to see history --but they wouldn't say where they had come from or how they had heard about the event.

"I just want to say that I'm witnessing history happening," one woman said - three times. She wouldn't give her name.

I assume the woman was beamed down from Planet Zorf. Wait, you've never heard of Planet Zorf? Well, you must not be getting Palin's secret communications, which apparently are being beamed to the tinfoil hats that all Palin supporters have to wear. It's clear that CBS News hasn't cracked this rube version of the Enigma Code:

Palin has repeatedly cast the press corps as treating her unfairly, and has tried to make her Facebook and Twitter accounts primary sources of information about her - a strategy she is continuing with the bus tour, for which she is directing interested parties to her political action committee website. (Information about a visit only goes up after she has made the stop.)

So how do the Palinistas know where to go? What deep secret do these Palinistas harbor? When will the rhetorical questions end?